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Tekapton
Phonology Consonants Vowels Phonotactics The stress in Tekapton words usually falls on the last syllable. Basic Grammar Nouns In Tekapton's unique grammar, every word is grammatically a noun. Some of these noun-words describe a real object (person, house, car etc.), others refer to abstract categories (beauty, good, evil), and some describe actions (seeing, running etc.) However, in the grammar there is very little difference in how these types of nouns are treated. Each noun in a Tekapton sentence is preceded by an article. The article defines the word's case, number, and mood (yes, don't be surprised, the mood is attached to nouns, too). If there are no dependent words between the word and it's article, the article and the noun are written as one word. Otherwise, the dependent words are placed between the article and the main word. The Nominative article, i'', is often dropped when it is the first word in the sentence. For example: Categories Nouns in Tekapton have a ''category, or generalized gender. The category is determined by the first consonant(s) of the word, and nouns dependent to this word have to agree to it in category. Naturally the starting consonants overlap for some groups, and some groups have several posible starting consonants. Categories group things that are loosely related to each other by a certain criteria. For example *men (father, brother, son) or persons of certain profession or quality *women (mother, sister, daughter) *animals *insects *long things (hair, thread, rope, road, river) *thin things (finger, stick, branch, pencil, tail, horn) *flat things (leaf, page, plate, lake) *things that have a horizontal surface (table, floor, ceiling, sky, bed) *vertical things (building, wall, fence, tree) *round things (ball, eye, sun, moon) *things that stick out (hill, thorn, nose, ear) *collections (forest, book, week, dust) *materials (wood, flesh, soil, metal) * small things (crumb, dot, particle, star) *food *liquids (water, milk, ink, blood) *solids, hard things (rock, brick, ice) *containers (box, bag, cup, room, boat, car) *(b-, p-, f-) qualities (good, evil, wrong, right, beauty, difference, size, height, warmth, fun) *(n-, r-) states (posession, ability, love, life, death) *(d-, t-, tr-) transitions (movement, becoming, change, start, finish) *(l-, t-) actions (sight, delivery, payment, attack, control) *(s-) places (place in, out, around, above, under) *colors *number (few, many, one, two, three) and some others. Of course, due to historical reasons, sound changes, foreign words etc. some categories contain words that do not seem to belong there. Cases There are 5 cases in Tekapton, including Nominative. Cases are formed by changing the article: For example: Kabal kagor - The boy is in the house Gor galo lekabal - The boy sees the house (lit.: The house is in the view of the boy) kabal kabir - a good boy Inessive As you can see, English adjectives and present-tense verbs are usually translated into Tekapton using Inessive. Thus you say "in view" to translate "see", "in beauty" to translate "beautiful", and so on. Objects of an action are put into Genitive, similar to English "destruction of a planet" ("planet" is the object of destruction here). Sometimes, however, the subject and object are reversed, like in "gor galo lekabal". Here a Tekapton speaker appears to use a passive voice, which is actually a very frequently observed way of expression in this language. It might be helpful to look closer at the agreement of words in one of the above examples, e.g. ""gor galo lekabal". Here "galo" ("in view") is agreeing with "(i)gor" ("house") and it is therefore has article "ga-". Similarly "lekabal" ("of the boy") is agreeing with "galo" and therefore its genitive article "le-" starts with the first letter of the main word, "l-". One can illustrate that using color: gor galo lekabal Finally, it is worth mentioning that the order of words can be different in these phrases. The following are good Tekapton phrases as well: i galo lekabal gor gor ga lekabal lo i ga lekabal lo gor You can see here how the article is written separately from the main word when dependent words are put in between. Allative and Ablative Similarly to Inessive, when Allative and Ablative are used with words that mean states, transitions or actions, they indicate perfective or future tense. For example: Haz huton tel - Father is going to say something (lit.: Father is into saying of something.) Noton telep - I have said everything (I am from saying of thing of all.) Mood Plural To put a word into plural, one has to add ''-i'' to its article. When ''-i'' is added to the Nominative article,'' i'', they fuse into'' ï'', and that article can no longer be omitted. For example: gor gekabal (the boy's house) -- gor geikabal (the house of boys) -- ïgor geikabal (the houses of boys) One-Consonant Words There are a number of words in Tekapton that have no vowels in their root. Such words are always written together with their article, and their dependent words can not come before them. Moreover, if a dependent word immediately follows such consonant-only word, and is agreeing with it, then, instead of repeating the consonant twice, both words are fused together. For example Nade -- I go (lit. "I am in movement") = (I)N + nade Here (i)n means "I" (root n''), which is fused with ''nade "in movement" (inessive article na, agreeing with in, + ''root ''de). Nade dus -- I go here (I am in the movement into there) The word dus is made of the allative article du (agreeing with de), + the consonant-only root s'' "here, this place". Gen gor gas -- this is my house ''gen means "my" (genitive article, agreeing with gor + root n''). ''Gas can be literally translated as "in here" and is the Inessive of is, agreeing with gor. Below is the list of the most commonly used all-consonant roots: n -- I, we (plural) g -- you, you (plural) k -- he, they (plural) m -- she, they (plural) s -- this, this place st -- place above zd -- place below sk -- place outside zg -- place inside sp -- place near z -- that, that place p -- everything l -- thing, something f -- nothing r -- what? tz -- day, time d -- hand, posession t -- likeness sh -- cause j -- wish, desire w -- need Here are some examples: Falo len las -- I see nothing here. Goton ter? -- What did you say? Nawenaton tug tel -- I have to tell you something. (lit. I am in need of me telling to you of something). Dictionary bir - good bal - youth; newness birbalo - beauty gor - house haz - father kabal - boy lo - sight, view ton - speech Example text Category:Languages